Our Prayer for the Monday After: Pressure Points: The Pressure of Trials

Each Monday we’ll be bringing Sunday into the work week by sharing a prayer for the week based on the Sunday sermon. You can now catch the sermon blogs written by our blogging team Wednesdays, where they’ll offer a mid-week shot of espresso to help re-energize, encourage and challenge us in the midst of our work weeks!

The Monday After Sunday, January 15, 2015: Pressure Points: The Pressure of Trials

Yesterday, Pastor Josh Petersen kicked off the Pressure Points teaching sermon series by talking about The Pressure of Trials.

We began reading in the first chapter of the book of James:

“This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing to the “twelve tribes”—Jewish believers scattered abroad.

Greetings!

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Believers who are poor have something to boast about, for God has honored them. And those who are rich should boast that God has humbled them. They will fade away like a little flower in the field. The hot sun rises and the grass withers; the little flower droops and falls, and its beauty fades away. In the same way, the rich will fade away with all of their achievements.

God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation.”

Pastor Josh highlighted a few things:

1. Consider: ” The word consider is a game changer. It means you have a say in how your face your trials; you choose perspective.” -Pastor Josh Petersen

2. Opportunity: Trials present us with an opportunity to grow to be more like Christ and increase our endurance.

This week, when you face a trial:

1. Name it.

2. Aim it: Say, “this will be about me becoming more like Jesus.”

3. Consider it: You may not choose your trials but you can always choose your perspective.

4. Claim it: Say, “I’m taking the different angle, and I will have joy in what God is going in my life.”